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#3016797 01/22/23 09:17 PM
Joined: Oct 2013
Posts: 7
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Junior Member
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Joined: Oct 2013
Posts: 7
Hi all,

Second marriage. We were married in 2018. Things were pretty amazing to begin with. We were both studying when we met and so had a lot of time for each other. We live together. I have one teenage son from my previous marriage and she has two girls, one pre-teen and one early teen.

Things have gotten progressively worse between us. I won’t go into all of the details right now, but we have been arguing intermittently and don’t seem to resolve anything. Those arguments tend to devolve into her making disrespectful judgments and me occasionally making a relatively mild outburst in response (i.e. adding in some colourful language when explaining my point).

The reason I am posting is that I need some feedback in relation to a couple of incidents that happened in October last year.

The first is an argument that we had in the kitchen at home one evening. Things got a bit more heated than normal and she reverted what I would describe as a common pattern of making a disrespectful judgment and then trying to storm off without acknowledging any of my viewpoints, even though I was trying to explain my viewpoint in a civil way (albeit with some frustration). I find this sort of arguing behaviour quite annoying (it’s a pattern) and this time I stood in the doorway and said she had to listen to one thing I wanted to say first. She angrily demanded I get out of the way and then pushed her way past me. There was multiple other doors to exit the room. After this happened she accused me of domestic violence and sent me a link to a website with a list of behaviours that are considered domestic violence. I do not feel that standing in her way was acceptable on my part but I also think her behaviour was also quite aggressive and controlling. I agreed that I would not do that again and I haven’t.

Around a week later tensions boiled over again. She was still harbouring significant anger towards me from the last argument. This time it got to the point where she picked up a pillow and started hitting me with it. She swung it as hard as she could and hit me squarely in the side of the head multiple times. The pillow was heavy enough and her swings were hard enough that my ears were ringing and my head hurt. I did not defend myself or react as I was in shock with her being so out of control. I was extremely upset by this and for the first time in our marriage felt like I maybe wanted to end it. I am still not really over what happened.

After this she became extremely remorseful and apologetic. I accepted her apology and decided to move on with things.

This then came up in a recent discussion with her about six weeks ago, but this time she started blaming me for it all. She said I wanted her to do it and why didn’t I defend myself or move out of the way? She then raised the earlier incident and claimed that my behaviour was much worse. I could not believe the turnaround and found her blaming me for her assault on me to be extremely upsetting. This has come up again one further time since and she has stuck to her position on that. In her view my standing in her way, which lasted for seconds, is worse than what she did to me, even though I have told her how hurt I was by what she did.

The reason I am posting is to get some viewpoints on what I should think about all of this. Although she is quite strong and athletic for a female I am much taller than she is and was not at risk of serious physical harm. But that doesn’t change how deeply upsetting the whole thing is.

Joined: Sep 2008
Posts: 9,527
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Joined: Sep 2008
Posts: 9,527
Likes: 9
Originally Posted by ~~Concerned~~
The reason I am posting is to get some viewpoints on what I should think about all of this. Although she is quite strong and athletic for a female I am much taller than she is and was not at risk of serious physical harm. But that doesn’t change how deeply upsetting the whole thing is.
I won't attempt to tell you what you should think.

You seem to be suggesting that what she did was worse than what you did, but I don't see where that kind of analysis will lead you. It doesn't matter whose behaviour was worse; what matters is that you had an angry outburst and so did your wife, and that these are destroying your marriage.

I had a look at your history and you seem to have had a similar pattern in your first marriage, where you were unhappy with your wife and she seemed not to care how you felt. Would you say that you're back in the same place now?

You also had angry outbursts in that marriage. You were told to look into anger management, but clearly you have not eliminated this behaviour.

How did the first marriage end? Do you have custody of the child of that marriage? How did that come about? Why isn't it shared custody?

Second marriages with blended families have a higher failure rate than the already high failure rate of first marriages. What do you argue about?

I'll stop now and give you a chance to write more.


BW
Married 1989
His PA 2003-2006
2 kids.

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